


The City Lights

by AppleSharon



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Eventual Romance, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, Pining, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:34:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24573895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AppleSharon/pseuds/AppleSharon
Summary: Contrary to popular belief within the Shinra Electric Power Company, Director Reeve Tuesti was not a bad liar. He had learned to be exceptional at it. So exceptional, in fact, that people assumed that he was horrific at lying — the sheepish downward glance, playing up a natural habit of pulling at his shirtsleeves, it was too easy at this point. He simply exaggerated his own instinctive mannerisms.It was as easy as learning how to carry himself as an executive as opposed to an engineer, or undoing a thick grasslands accent. As he had made his way up the Shinra corporate ladder, it had come easier and easier to him.The problem was how much he loathed himself afterwards.Where Urban Development and Planning Division executive Reeve Tuesti gets a new assistant and joins AVALANCHE earlier than expected, among other things.Set just before the events of Final Fantasy VII. AU-ish (adheres to original compilation details but with Reeve joining AVALANCHE sooner than the original timeline)
Relationships: Reeve Tuesti/Reeve Tuesti's Assistant
Comments: 39
Kudos: 49





	1. The Accident at Mako Reactor Seven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [UnbiddenRhythm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnbiddenRhythm/gifts), [4ever_Rewritten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/4ever_Rewritten/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because what I need is another work in progress, probably. Kind of a "What if Reeve joined AVALANCHE sooner?" AU-ish.
> 
> To the two biggest Reeve/Assistant shippers I know of and in the service of more Reeve content.

“There’s been an accident at Mako Reactor Seven. Requesting emergency medical personnel, transport, and cleanup crew.”

The call came through at 23:00, a tinny voice through crackling static. It lit up yellow on the top left side of a massive switchboard on the second floor just above reception, where it was then transferred to the Urban Development and Planning Division desk. 

It did not go to Director Tuesti immediately.

Rarely did calls go to Director Tuesti immediately. He knew this. It bothered him. He couldn’t do anything about it, or rather, he could have done something about it, but he didn’t want to call in favours or use what meagre pull he did have in the company on something so small. 

Director Tuesti had learned — through myriad trials, accidents, lost resources, and exactly one lost fistfight — to choose his battles within the company wisely. 

After the accident at Mako Reactor Seven, he would revise his assessment of how wise it would be to receive these types of calls first — or at least have them go directly to his personal assistant so she could determine their importance. 

An accident at a mako reactor can mean a variety of things. Shinra Electric Power Company protocol dictated that the first response come from lower down the chain of command. This meant that it went to the main desk of the Urban Development and Planning Division where it was received by a young man named Stacey Winthers. 

Upon hearing that there had been an accident, Mr Winthers asked of its severity. It was severe, the tinny voice told him, still crackling through the receiver. 

Sometimes the mako interfered with communications, especially from the outskirts of the city to the tower. Midgar undercity residents frequently complained that their phones and PHS’ were filled with static and reception was, in certain places, nonexistent. This included most of the reactor buildings. The rest of the message was lost in transmission. All Mr Winthers heard was that it was a severe accident. 

After consulting his protocol sheet, shaking hands rattling the laminated piece of paper that was usually tacked above his desk — being only two weeks into his employment at the company, Mr Winthers had never dealt with a severe accident at a mako reactor before — he elevated it to the next supervisor on his phone tree. 

A week later, Mr Winthers was out of a job due to an unrelated reason.

Five supervisors and over an hour after the call about the accident had first come in, Director Tuesti’s phone rang. 

It was a well-documented fact in Shinra that Urban Development and Planning Division Director, Reeve Tuesti, had trouble keeping a personal assistant. In the past year alone he had gone through fifteen of them. One of them had toughed it out for nearly two months. Another had only lasted a matter of hours. 

Reeve’s inability hang on to an assistant was particularly impressive when considering his peers in Weapons Development, Public Safety, and the Science and Research Divisions. 

Even when not placed in a side-by-side comparison with the likes of Scarlet, who had murdered no fewer than three of her assistants, or Heidegger who physically abused everyone beneath him, Reeve cared about his subordinates. He considered them coworkers, or even acquaintances.

Yet, in an odd twist of irony, those who worked under Reeve didn’t want to disappoint him and forced themselves to keep the same hours as their workaholic boss. They burned out whenever they reached their own personal limits. 

The position of Director Tuesti’s personal assistant was both one of the most sought-after jobs at Shinra and one of the least. 

On the night of this particular accident, he had no assistant. He was scheduled to meet his latest one at some point the next day. 

When Chief Engineering Supervisor Sveta Aliev called the director’s office, she did not expect to hear the director’s voice on the other end of the line. Director Tuesti didn’t scare Sveta — in fact, they worked closely enough that she sometimes called him “Reeve” rather than “sir” — but it still startled her to hear him answer his phone directly. That just wasn’t the way things were done at Shinra, even in Reeve’s department.

Sveta also wasn’t meant to still be in the office at this point, and neither was Reeve, so she supposed that they were already bending the rules. 

“There’s been a severe accident at Mako Reactor Seven,” Sveta said. 

“How severe?” Sveta could hear him rising from his chair instantly, wheels squeaking in protest at the sudden movement. 

“They didn’t say. A small team of medical first responders has already been sent but I’m requesting backup and an emergency cleanup crew.” 

“Of course! Why do you always have to wait for— never mind, this is hardly your fault, Sveta. Send as many crews as you possibly can without drawing attention to the cost.”

“Sounds good, sir.”

“Before you go, Sveta?” 

“Yes?”

“Why are you still here? It’s past midnight. You should have gone home hours ago.”

“Why are you still here, sir?” 

She heard Reeve sigh loudly. 

“That’s a fair point, I suppose,” he said. “But after you respond to this, be sure to take at least two days off. In fact, I’m drawing up the paperwork right now.”

***

Since it involved the highest-level of mako poisoning, this accident was the most severe type of accident that a Shinra reactor could have. By contrast, it was also the least severe since it only involved one individual: Chief Maintenance Engineer for Mako Reactor Seven, Rowan Rasberry.

Only one of these facts made it through in the initial phone call for support. Mr Winthers had heard that the accident was severe but not that involved only one person. He had presumed, erroneously, that it was likely a team of people injured, on par with last year’s steam explosion in Mako Reactor Six. 

This ambiguity was ultimately why Director Reeve Tuesti was called to the Sector Seven Hospital, to be followed by a visit to Mako Reactor Seven, first thing the next morning. 

By his standards, even if it only involved one life, it was a severe accident that should be avoided, but Shinra was certainly not run on Director Tuesti’s standards.

He had slept a total of four hours and had already downed two cups of coffee as he exited the company car that the President had sent to his apartment building for the occasion. Reeve felt about as well as he could feel going to visit one of his engineers who was in the hospital for, what was most likely, irreparable damage to his brain function due to mako poisoning. 

Three women and a dark-haired young man spoke in hushed tones in front of Rowan Rasberry’s door. The oldest of the women was most likely Mr. Rasberry’s wife. Reeve assumed that the two remaining women — one with dark red hair and the other brown, pulled back from her face — were most likely his daughters and the young man a son. One of the younger women was in what appeared to be a dance costume, red sash trailing behind her on the hallway floor. 

He internally berated himself for not remembering how many children Rowan had. 

Reeve took a deep breath and stepped forward before balking at the end of the hallway. He had been in this situation several times and it was always awful, especially since he couldn’t actually offer his genuine condolences to the family because that, according to the Shinra Electric Power Company and their army of lawyers, would be assuming fault. 

“Director Tuesti!” 

The redhead waved to him before setting down the hallway at a brisk pace. She was dressed in a light-grey suit. He wondered if she had been on her way to work or, even worse, had stayed at the hospital overnight after finding out about her father. Reeve steeled himself, straightening his back and trying to recall everything his Junon Academy teachers had once taught him about the power of proper posture. 

“I’m so sor—“

“Director Tuesti! You’re here earlier than I thought you would be. The President said you wouldn’t be here for another hour.” She shoved a notepad into his hands and plucked a stylus from behind her ear. 

“The victim is Rowan Rasberry,” she continued. “He’s 49 years-old, Chief Maintenance Engineer of Mako Reactor Seven. He collapsed from exhaustion in Mako Storage at approximately 17:00 and wasn’t found until 22:00. The doctors are still running tests, but it looks like a case of severe mako poisoning.”

Reeve’s first thought was that this was his fault. Rowan Rasberry’s accident was his fault. He always overworked his people somehow, despite not meaning to, and now a man was in a vegetative state because of it.

Reeve’s second thought was unfortunately voiced aloud in the form of a rather rude, “Who are you?” 

The woman rolled up the sleeve of her blazer and stuck her hand out. When he reached out to shake it, she grasped his hand firmly, looking him directly in the eye. Her grey eyes narrowed, as if she was sizing him up for a fight. 

“I’m Rita Spencer, sir. I’m your new personal assistant.”

“I’m… so sorry Ms Spencer.” 

As first-day gaffes went, it wasn’t Reeve’s worst, but on top of everything else that was going on, he was mentally kicking himself for the assumption. 

“It’s okay, sir,” she said with a smile. She reached towards him and tapped the notepad screen. “At the end of the hallway is his wife Amelia, his daughter Jessie, and her friend Biggs.”

Reeve couldn’t help but smile at how Rita Spencer’s voice emphasized “friend” in her description. 

“I’m sure I’ve already come across as terribly impolite,” Reeve said. “So if you wouldn’t mind, why is Jessie wearing a dance costume?”

“She’s an actress at the Gold Saucer. Last night was her debut in a lead role.”

Reeve swallowed. He felt ill. 

“When the call came through last night I pushed to retrieve her via helicopter so she could be here as soon as possible. The mayor approved it himself.”

This statement earned Reeve’s undivided attention. She said it casually, as if having Mayor Domino fly a random actress from the Gold Saucer was just another thing that usually happened. The mayor — although essentially confined to the Shinra archives with no actual decision-making power — did have his own sizable amount of pocket change, albeit with remarkably strict guidelines on what he could spend it on. 

Apparently, he could spend it on this. Before Reeve could ask logistics, or why she had been working the day before her start date, or how she already knew all of this, she kept talking. 

“Also you weren’t. So don’t worry about it, sir.”

“What?”

“Terribly impolite. You weren’t.”

Her smile was soft and yet somehow still reached her eyes, making them crinkle at the outside corners. Again, Reeve found himself smiling in response. 

“Director, I can take care of this for you if you want to head to the reactor.”

Reeve sighed. He picked at the cuffs of his suit jacket — a bad habit from his school days that he hadn’t ever been able to rid himself of as an adult. 

“I’ll do it,” he said resolutely. “It means nothing if I don’t.”

She stared up at him with an odd expression. Reeve felt like smacking himself in the face. That was the second time that he’d accidentally insulted his assistant within ten minutes of meeting her for the first time. 

“I’m sorry. That’s not meant to be an insult to you, it’s just… better if it comes from me.”

She held her hands up in front of her body, palms out, while shaking her head vehemently. “No! I wasn’t insulted, sir. I’m actually impressed. Not everyone would do what you’re about to do if they had an out.”

A blush spread across her cheeks but she continued to look him in the eye until he finally dropped his gaze and looked back down the hallway. 

“Well then,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

***

Rita Spencer’s “first day” as Director Reeve Tuesti’s assistant spanned seventy-two hours, or three days.

After the visit to the hospital, Reeve had been dragged into meetings with the president and the company lawyers. He assured them multiple times over that the Rasberry family would not sue them as long as Rowan Rasberry was taken care of by the Shinra Electric Power Company for as long as his family wished to keep him alive, or he died of unforeseen complications from the mako poisoning. 

Reeve may have personally suggested that this was something Shinra could easily do for the Rasberry family to shock and then relief on their faces alongside a prominently raised eyebrow from his new assistant, but there was no proof that they hadn’t known before meeting with Reeve that morning. 

Then Reeve and Rita were whisked to Mako Reactor Seven, where Reeve had to conduct a full inspection, regardless of the fact that the accident had only involved one person and had truly been an unfortunate accident in the truest meaning of the word. This was followed by another endless stream of meetings as the company car shuttled them from reactor to reactor, and the Shinra building, where they spent their time running from the 64th floor executive boardroom to Reeve’s office, to the café for the Urban Development and Planning personnel, and back to the boardroom. 

At some point, Rita had changed from her heels into athletic trainers. Reeve was afraid to ask when and how she’d had the foresight to bring them. 

Now, the two of them were staring blankly at each other from across one of the café tables. It was still light out, the sun streaming in from the floor-to-ceiling glass panels, but Reeve no longer remembered what day it was. 

All he knew is that he, somehow, had to convince Rita Spencer to stay. 

As he watched his reflection in the coffee frown, Reeve practiced compliments and praise. He meant every last bit of them, but was afraid that these would seem false given the days they had just lived through. 

The reality was significantly more embarrassing for Reeve because, although some form of these thoughts were on the tip of his tongue, they did not come out the way he wanted them to. Instead, he looked at Ms Spencer over his cup of coffee before placing it down on the worn café table.

“You must know Ms Spencer, that I am fully prepared to go down on my hands and knees and beg you to reconsider if you give your notice now. It won’t be pretty.”

His face immediately coloured as he realized the exact words he had spoken, and Reeve buried his head in his hands. 

Reeve usually took particular care to watch what he said when he became overtired or drunk, lest his accent come out. This time, his momentary carelessness had nothing to do with his accent and everything to do with not knowing what to say. 

“I promise I did not mean that how it sounded,” he said. Reeve’s voice was muffled by the palm of his right hand over his mouth. He steeled himself, wondering if she was going to throw the cup of coffee in his face. 

She laughed. 

“If you’re going to do that, then you may as well call me Rita.”

Reeve must have stared at her in disbelief for an inordinate amount of time, because she shifted and leaned forward. 

“That was a joke,” she said. “But you should really call me by my first name. I don’t mind at all. In fact, I’d prefer it. Ms Spencer reminds me of my mom.”

“You may call me Reeve, if you’d like.”

“Director. I wouldn’t dream of it. That’s highly inappropriate!” 

She was still smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first name "Rita" comes from UnbiddenRhythm. The surname "Spencer" was chosen due to its meaning of butler or steward.


	2. Rita and the Mayor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Does this visit mean you’ve thought over my proposal? AVALANCHE could use someone like you in Tuesti’s ear. I’ve always had the feeling that boy is close,” he said, shaking his head after a pause._
> 
> _“But he’s always been the company’s man through and through at the end of it all. Even after that business with the Turks a few months ago when I would have sworn… but they got him young, I suppose. Still, it’s disappointing. With that boy’s intellect, there’s no telling what we could do from the inside.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens.

When she was younger, Rita had often been dropped off at her grandfather’s office while her parents were both at work. His office was in the centre building of the Shinra tower. Being a busy and important man — in the words of Rita’s mother — he barely looked up from his desk and handed her books to read. 

Some of them were beyond her comprehension at the time, and when she had mentioned this to him — afraid of what her stern-looking relative would say at her speaking out of turn — her voice had cracked. 

He simply had smiled, reached underneath his desk, pulled out a dictionary, and handed it to her without another word.

Years later, his official office was completed on the sixty-second floor in the Corporate Archives. When it was finished, he was moved to a larger room with lacquered mahogany panels, circular shelves three-storeys high, white shelving robots, and a hole in the ceiling that looked up and out at the sky. 

Upon seeing it, thirteen year-old Rita had called it the “hole in the sky library.” 

She realized that same day that the location made it impossible for the window to be giving off natural sunlight — it was all an elaborate sunlamp setup, like the ones developed by Director Tuesti to give sunlight to the undercity. 

Rita was curious whether Director Tuesti had designed this one too. He was only twenty-one at the time, but already making a name for himself as the prodigy who had designed Shinra’s mako reactors at seventeen. 

Every teacher in Midgar at the time, including Rita’s own secondary school teachers, attempted to use Reeve Tuesti as a motivational device. His Junon Academy graduation presentation was practically required viewing in the Midgar school system, even if one wasn’t going into engineering. 

No longer needing a babysitter, Rita still stopped by the library daily to read, do her homework, and spend time with her grandfather in comfortable silence while they occasionally grinned at each other over their respective tasks. His personal assistant, Hart, had given her a permanent visitor’s elevator pass that allowed her access to the glass elevator that gave Rita, in her biased opinion, the best view of Midgar that anyone could have. 

It made her sad sometimes that no one she shared the elevator with appeared interested in Midgar. They were all too busy looking at paperwork or on their large PHS prototypes that the company had given out for employees to test — calling their families and often shouting over the static. She studied them, hoping one day that she would catch someone else watching the sun set over the city, but she never did. 

Instead, she hugged her backpack to her chest, idly playing with the soft moogle charm her mom had given her as she watched green vapour disappear into the darkening sky. 

The first word that one of the Corporate Archives’ shelving robots had ever said to her was, “Hullo.” She had given it a “hullo” back, tilting her head to the side in curiosity. It hadn’t said anything else, but had wheeled itself against a nearby shelf and then powered down. These robots were funny little things that greeted her when she walked in their vicinity and muttered odd phrases like “Mako. Explosive.”

Rita had never seen the robots shelve a single book. 

Tonight, Rita walked into the Shinra Electric Power Company headquarters with purpose, immediately tapping herself in and boarding the general company elevator, swapping at the middle building of Shinra to the glass executive elevator. This was the last time she would use her guest pass. Tomorrow, she would tap in with her work ID card. 

It was already dark. Rita could see her reflection clearly, reflecting off of the glass in the bright lights of the elevator. She had just missed the 18:00 reactor venting and the mako had already dispersed into the atmosphere. The city lights had come up, reflecting off of the large pipes converging on Sector Zero while Sectors Seven and Eight glittered in the distance. 

It was still her favourite view of the city. 

Hart greeted her at the elevator on the sixty-second floor. She wondered if her grandfather had sent him to fetch her, or whether he had simply known, from the moment her keycard hit the touchpad at reception, that she was in the building. Hart had always been remarkably faithful to her grandfather and also remarkably sad. 

Rita couldn’t remember ever seeing Hart smile. 

He let her pull the tan, leather-bound book that acted as the key to her grandfather’s office, bowing to her as she stepped aside. 

“Hullo grandfather,” she said with a wave as she walked in. 

It took him a minute to rise from his seat and walk around his desk. She would have rushed over to help him up, but he would have just jabbed her lightly in the side with his cane, yelling at her that he wasn’t an old man and could do these things himself. 

Instead, Rita grinned at him from where she stood, leaning on a nearby stack of books. Her new Shinra ID card was displayed prominently on a lanyard that fell over her light-coloured blazer. 

“So you start here tomorrow, hnnn?” 

She nodded. 

“Does this visit mean you’ve thought over my proposal? AVALANCHE could use someone like you in Tuesti’s ear. I’ve always had the feeling that boy is close,” he said, shaking his head after a pause. 

“But he’s always been the company’s man through and through at the end of it all. Even after that business with the Turks a few months ago when I would have sworn… but they got him young, I suppose. Still, it’s disappointing. With that boy’s intellect, there’s no telling what we could do from the inside.”

Rita frowned. “You know I can’t risk it. At least not at the start. I don’t want anyone to know I’m related to you. I need to prove that I earned this job on my own merit.”

He wrinkled his nose, squaring his shoulders tensely and Rita steeled herself for one of his rambling lectures. Yet the next moment he relaxed and whatever fight he had been gearing up to start left him almost as quickly as it had come upon him. 

“You won’t have to worry about that, kiddo.” He jabbed her foot lightly with his cane. “I have my hands full as it is. I suppose it helps that Bri decided to rid herself of the Domino name.”

Although he said this with a wry smile, Rita couldn’t help but hear the hurt in his voice. 

She also couldn’t blame her mother for wanting to distance herself from the publicity that her family’s name automatically brought. Being Briony Domino was completely different than being Briony Spencer, especially when most people simply knew her as Ms or Mrs Spencer rather than the mayor’s daughter. 

It had been weird enough when her mother had taken Rita aside before her first day of primary school and explained why someone might photograph her sometimes. She didn’t want to think about what her mother would have gone through when she was younger. Her grandfather had held his office for an unnaturally large amount of time for a variety of reasons — most of them technically illegal although sanctioned by the Shinra company — and her mother had lived through many of those years as a Domino. 

“I just wanted to see if you had any advice for your favourite granddaughter on her first day at her new job,” Rita said quietly. 

“You’re my only granddaughter,” he groused, shifting his weight off of his bad leg. 

When she looked at him again he was smiling at her proudly. 

“Well, like I said, as far as directors go, Tuesti is the only palatable one of the group. He won’t kill you and he won’t hurt you outside of overworking you. If you’d been assigned to one of the other ones I would have pulled your name from the applications pile.”

“No, you wouldn’t have. And one of those assignments wouldn’t have made sense since I do want to become an engineer some day,” Rita said dryly. “I wouldn’t have applied for them.”

“You think Shinra cares about that?” He shook his head violently before continuing. “They don’t give a shit what you want or think. Although Tuesti might. When he remembers you exist. Usually he’s too busy working or fixing up that robot cat for Tseng.”

_Robot cat? For the Turks?_

Rita filed away this information for later. 

“Do you know why he hasn’t been able to keep an assistant?” It didn’t make sense to Rita that turnover would be so high if Director Tuesti didn’t have the same abuse rumours that followed the rest of the Shinra executive board wherever they went. 

“He’s a workaholic,” her grandfather said. “Never stops. Rarely sleeps. Lives on that awful coffee they serve in the employee lounge. Doesn’t mean to work his staff into the ground but they all love him so they do it anyway.”

Rita nodded, still a bit confused that employee devotion could be the reason behind a burnout rate as high as the one at Shinra’s Urban Development and Planning Division. 

“You’re overqualified for this position anyway,” he sniped. “You could have started somewhere else as an engineer right away, even if it was for less money.”

“But then I wouldn’t be able to study under Director Tuesti.”

“Tuesti’s smart but he’s no teacher.”

“Well I’ll just have to find that out for myself then.”

He sighed. “You’ve already made up your mind, I know, I know. But you can’t blame an old man for wanting to look after his favourite granddaughter.”

Rita had been prepared for another fight, but this statement disarmed her completely. Biting back tears, she walked forward and gave him a hug. 

She was nearly as tall as he was at this point, and he was continuing to lose weight every year — likely from the stress of being an undercover operative for AVALANCHE. She wondered when he had become so old and how she hadn’t noticed until now. 

“Thanks,” Rita said, her voice muffled against his shoulder. After hugging him for another minute, she pulled away, still smiling. “I’d better get back to my flat. I need a full night’s sleep before my first day on the job.”

“Especially if you’re working for Tuesti,” he quipped. Jabbing her foot with his cane again, he prodded her back towards the door. “Now get out of here.”

“Will do, boss.” She stuck out her tongue at him as she walked away. 

“If you change your mind, let me know!” he called out after her. 

“I wont!” she yelled back, nearly running into Hart, who was standing silently in attendance outside the Mayor’s Office.

***

The call came through at 23:00. By the time it had reached Director Tuesti in his office through the proper channels, it had also reached his new personal assistant Rita Spencer — who had been lying in the bedroom of her flat, staring at the ceiling, too nervous to sleep — through the improper channels of her grandfather’s network with AVALANCHE.

“Remember,” she told him as she was about to hang up the phone. “I haven’t promised you anything. This information better not be to ask for a favour in the future.”

“Just the idea that you’re thinking about it right now is enough for me,” her grandfather replied, no small amount of warmth in his voice. “Either way, all the best on your first day.”

Rita was both too tired and too keyed-up to argue.

“Thanks, grandpa,” she said. 

“Oh, and Rita?”

“Yeah?”

“Bring your athletic trainers. You never knew when you might need them.”

***

Rita took a deep breath, blinking at a buzzing light in the hospital hallway. The sound was bothering her more than it should have, although she supposed that most of her irritation was due to the fact that she was about to tell Rowan Rasberry’s family that mako poisoning had almost entirely incapacitated his brain functions.

This too, she supposed, was part of her job.

“Director, I can take care of this for you if you want to head to the reactor,” she said, still dreading the inevitable response. They would split up so Director Tuesti could get to the reactor inspection sooner and the Rasberry family could still be given advice on how to proceed. 

Instead, he shifted his feet, plucking at a loose thread on his shirtsleeve cuffs. 

“I’ll do it,” he said. His voice was quiet but determined. “It means nothing if I don’t.”

Rita couldn’t hide the shock on her face, eyes widening as she studied his expression. He looked genuinely sad.

“I’m sorry.” Director Tuesti stumbled over his words a bit. “That’s not meant to be an insult to you, it’s just… better if I do it.”

“No! I wasn’t insulted, sir.” She waved her hands in the air, barely believing that he had been worried that it would bother her. “I’m actually impressed. Not everyone would do what you’re about to do if they had an out.”

Rita kept staring at him until his cheeks coloured red. In that moment, she realized that this was why turnover under Director Tuesti was so high. 

_This is why his staff members work themselves into early burnouts._

“Well then,” Director Tuesti said when she didn’t follow up with anything else. “Let’s do this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just like the name Briony. 
> 
> The idea that Mayor Domino is Rita's grandfather also comes from UnbiddenRhythm. I'm just expanding on it here as Reeve's potential AVALANCHE contact. Note that currently, Rita is not a member of AVALANCHE.


	3. The Executive Elevator

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Rita smiled sadly. “They’re upset. Amelia Rasberry seems to be dealing with the situation the best, but Jessie is angry. Not only did she lose her father, but she lost her job and probably her career.”_
> 
> _Sighing, Reeve pressed his fingers into his temples to stave off an oncoming headache. “I’m sorry.”_
> 
> _“I know you are,” she said softly. “But sometimes, that doesn’t help.”_
> 
> _He nodded. “I know.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's more of Reeve being an awkward guilt-ridden potato. Enjoy? ^ ^;

“Director Tuesti, what a pleasant surprise.”

Reeve looked up from his notepad where he had been scrolling past endless damage reassessments for Sector Six and jumped back to find the leader of the Turks standing less than a metre away from him. 

At first glance, Tseng appeared to be leaning against the glass, surveying Reeve with a slight frown, but Reeve noted that he wasn’t actually touching it. Behind him, the first rays of the sun were rising above the city, framing Tseng as a dark silhouette. 

Reeve wished he could see out across the city, but it was too bright at this time of day. 

Sector Six couldn’t be seen from this elevator — something that his executive peers likely considered a happy coincidence. Reeve had heard them complain to him more than once about what an eyesore the damage was, as if he could work some sort of miracle on his meagre budget that they kept siphoning from for their own projects. 

“Likewise, Tseng,” Reeve said, pulling his mind out of his work. He tried to compose himself as quickly as possible. Tseng was trained to study body language in minute detail and Reeve knew he already had failed at hiding his surprise. 

He hadn’t even heard Tseng enter the elevator.

Talking with any of the Turks gave Reeve a headache, but Tseng was by far the worst. Reeve felt like he was being placed under a microscope, studied, and somehow discarded after falling short of unspoken expectations in Tseng’s unblinking gaze. 

“It occurs to me that I never properly thanked you for your help in February,” Tseng said. 

“I was just…doing my job.” 

Reeve realized how stupid this sounded as the words left his mouth, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say. An ambush by Tseng in the executive elevator before he’d even had a chance to grab coffee was not how he had planned out his morning. 

“One could say that it was quite the opposite of your job. You knew Scarlet was looking for us.”

“Yes, well, it seemed like the right thing to do,” Reeve answered lamely. 

If it had been Reno or even Rude inside the elevator, they would have laughed hysterically or quirked an eyebrow respectively. Veld would have called on him to defend his words immediately.

Tseng’s facial expression didn’t change or shift in its piercing attentiveness. Reeve fought the urge to squirm.

“Interesting. Director Tuesti, that toy of yours…”

“Cait Sith.” At this point Reeve didn’t care if he sounded protective. He’d already lost this verbal sparring match, conceding that he hadn’t had a chance of winning from the start. 

“The King of Cats. Also interesting. It’s an impressive robot Director Tuesti. Please let us know if we can borrow it again.”

Reeve nodded. He may not have been fully awake, but he recognized a thinly-veiled command when he heard one. The Turks would be back to use Cait Sith at some unknown time in the future. 

He suddenly regretted ever having been involved at all. It would have been so easy to simply sit back and not do anything, although he supposed that he wouldn’t have found his solution to improving Cait Sith’s battle capabilities nearly as quickly without field testing. He needed to continue to improve the mog separately while keeping Cait Sith autonomous to make the most of his agility and speed for covert operations. 

Yet he still wondered why get involved at all. The short answer was that Veld was a friend, but that wasn’t necessarily true. He was an acquaintance at best. Veld had, albeit accidentally, destroyed his hometown although he’d also had a hand in helping save Ma. 

All he could feel right now was guilt and fear over the entire incident — another failure where people close to him had been hurt. 

“—could be a tremendous company asset, although you would risk having it probed by less delicate hands than your own.”

Tseng was still talking and that was definitely a not-so-thinly-veiled threat. 

“In return for your help earlier this year, Director, I’ll see what I can do about the Sector Six expressway and plate reconstruction.”

Reeve couldn’t hide his shock at this statement, expelling a small huff of astonishment. 

“That is what you were looking at, was it not?” Tseng said. “That accident was…most unfortunate. Also I do believe this is your floor.”

Bowing slightly as he walked out of the elevator, Reeve already felt exhausted and it was only 6:00. He hadn’t even run into Scarlet or Heidegger yet. Tseng was supposed to be one of the easier ones to deal with.

***

“Remind me never to anger the Turks,” Reeve said as he walked into his office. “It’s something I already know, but sometimes I need reminding.”

If he was a more dramatic person, he would have flopped into his office chair with a long sigh. Instead, he smiled up at Rita Spencer as he sat down behind his desk. 

She’d only been his assistant for a week and a half, but was already a fixture in his morning routine. 

“Consider yourself reminded sir,” Rita said, handing him a cup of coffee with a grin. “Did something happen?”

Reeve shook his head. It wasn’t worth bothering her about it when she had enough to worry about between helping oversee the Rasberry family’s home setup for Rowan Rasberry as well as gathering data for Sector Six. 

Not to mention that the information could easily get her killed. 

He took a large gulp of coffee, nearly drinking half the cup at once. His tongue was going to be numb for the rest of the day. 

Tseng’s eagerness to use Cait Sith again after just having restored his own department was alarming. Now that Reeve had some caffeine in him — it was probably psychosomatic at this point but he did feel more awake — he wondered if it would be worth digging into exactly what had happened with Tseng’s ascension as head of the Department of Administrative Research. He’d known about the official inquiry and Rufus’ intervention, but hadn’t bothered to gather any detailed information on it.

Already wracked with nerves that he would somehow be implicated in the entire situation, he had hidden Cait Sith in his flat, only working on him long enough to make repairs following his disassembly. That Turk had reconstructed him well enough, but Reeve took pride in his work and wanted to make sure Cait Sith was alright. 

Cait Sith was also the only way he possibly could keep up with Shinra’s web of internal politics. No one suspected the odd fortune-telling machine with a warm Kalm brogue and ridiculous outfit. 

Reeve winced. He was going to get an earful from the robot cat whenever he powered him on again. 

“Director Tuesti!”

“Y-yes?” 

He gulped down the rest of his coffee as Rita Spencer stepped away from where she had been leaning over his desk, trying to get his attention. 

“Forgive me if I’m overstepping but are you okay…sir? I’ve been calling your name for a while now.”

Reeve swallowed the last of his coffee. “I’m completely fine, Rita. You’re not overstepping. Thank you. And you don’t have to call me that. I already told you to call me Reeve.”

She shrugged and handed him another stack of folders. “Habit. And here are the schematics for Rowan Rasberry’s bed.”

He picked up the drawing with interest. Rita had only been given a few small drawing exercises at first, but Reeve appreciated her neatness. He certainly hadn’t had similarly clean lines when he had started. 

“Have you been here long enough to have habits?” 

Like being ambushed by Tseng in the elevator, Reeve suddenly was well out of his depth in this conversation and now also wholly out of line. Rita was someone he needed to keep around as long as possible — although her penchant for staying as late as he did combined with the fact that she always tried to be in his office before he arrived already didn’t bode well for her longevity. 

“I’m so sorry. I’m still not awake. This is very good. Your drawings are so precise they make me envious.” He rushed through the last part of his statement, hoping the compliment would smooth over his misstep. 

“Honestly it seems like you’ve been here longer,” Reeve continued. “In a good way, of course.”

This conversation was somehow worse than Tseng’s dominion over him in the executive elevator. 

Reeve breathed a sigh of relief when she simply laughed and took the drawing back. 

“I’ll see about getting this to the techs so they can deliver it to the Rasberry home as soon as possible,” she said. 

“How…are they?” Reeve asked, dreading the answer. 

Rita smiled sadly. “They’re upset. Amelia Rasberry seems to be dealing with the situation the best, but Jessie is angry. Not only did she lose her father, but she lost her job and probably her career.”

Sighing, Reeve pressed his fingers into his temples to stave off an oncoming headache. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you are,” she said softly. “But sometimes, that doesn’t help.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“How about I go get us some more coffee?” Rita said, breaking the heavy silence that followed. “I’ll work on the Rasberry case while you take another look at Sector Six.”

Reeve shook his head, rising from his desk. 

“I’ll get it,” he said. “Take another look at that drawing. You may have to move the hydraulics forward so it can fit into their house. Have you measured the door?”

Rita looked down at the schematic and then back up at Reeve with a widening smile. “No, I haven’t. But I will.” She looked giddy at the prospect of working on it further. 

Reeve ducked his head to hide the rising blush in his cheeks as he walked out the door.

***

Reeve insisted that Rita leave on time today. He really couldn’t have another assistant burning out, especially not one as good as the job as she was.

If anything she was too competent to be a personal assistant, and in his more paranoid moments staring up at the ceiling of his bedroom, unable to sleep, he had wondered if the company had somehow sent her to watch him. Quickly wracked with guilt over this unspoken accusation, Reeve had given up on sleeping, turned his notepad on, and continued to work through the next morning. 

Rita leaving on time meant that Reeve also had to leave on time, otherwise she would insist on staying late with him. Reeve had spent a few minutes throughout the afternoon surreptitiously loading the Sector Six expressway data onto his notepad as well as the cost needed from taxes, worker headcount, and finally, plans for rebuilding the plate above the existing undercity. 

The problem, as always, was acquiring permits to work around and above Wall Market. He should have fought harder against the building of the wall years ago. The current state of Wall Market was an open wound for Reeve — a reminder of how he could have at least attempted to stand up against his peers. Walling off an entire section of the undercity not only went against his design for Midgar but common sense in city planning. 

It wasn’t simply a personal failure, it was a failure at something he did well. 

“Director Tuesti?”

Startled, Reeve looked up. “Yes?”

“What did that stylus ever do to you?” 

She pointed at his hand, which was clenched around his notepad stylus so firmly that his knuckles were white. When he uncurled his hand, he saw a few stray marks from his own nails digging into his palms. 

“Sorry I was just thinking.” He flexed his hand in the air, feeling how stiff it had become in his anger. 

“About murdering Heidegger?”

They had unfortunately had a run-in with the Director of Public Safety briefly in the hallway as the Urban Planning and Development Division had been gathering for their own meeting. Heidegger had crowed about a rumoured tax hike and then sneered at Reeve’s staff before stomping away.

Reeve snorted. “Heidegger does take eighty-percent of Midgar’s tax money for ‘Public Safety.’” He punctuated Heidegger’s executive branch with air quotations. It was childish, but he was too tired and angry to care. 

“Director! I strongly suggest you keep such dark thoughts within these four walls.” 

Her tone was more amused than admonishing, but the statement still brought Reeve back to reality — his office was likely bugged.

He nodded seriously before looking back at the Sector Six estimates.

***

Reeve’s conversation with Tseng hung over him as he walked back into the executive elevator with Rita.

_“That is what you were looking at, was it not? That accident was…most unfortunate._

It hadn’t been a threat, but a warning, or a hint. Reeve had assumed that the collapse of Sector Six had been a flaw in his design, a lapse in construction material quality control — or a fault of the horrifically inefficient robot arms that the President had insisted on building despite Reeve’s opposition. 

Given how many mistakes Reeve had made in the past, and how many people had died because of them, it had been an easy assumption to make. 

Instead, Tseng had cornered him in the elevator to tell him that this was not the case, using layer upon layer of obfuscation that Reeve was unused to, but agreed was necessary. Momentarily, he again reminded himself that his office was likely bugged, and that this elevator certainly had it’s own video and audio feed to the Public Safety Division directly. 

Embarrassed that it had taken him this long to unearth the true meaning behind Tseng’s conversation, Reeve sighed loudly, tugging on his shirtsleeve. 

“Is something wrong, sir?” 

“Office politics are not my forté,” he said sheepishly. 

She frowned, but before she pressed him to elaborate, the 18:00 reactor venting started. Reeve could hear the rush of steam in his ears despite the distance — green particles dissipating quickly into the atmosphere. 

He remembered studying coal and hydropower plants in school, stumbling upon how to harness the mako vapour late at night in his fourth year at the Academy. 

“This is my favourite view of the city,” she said, interrupting his thoughts once again. 

Reeve nodded, smiling as the streetlamps flickered on across the plate. 

“Mine too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's no way that you're going to tell me that someone who is supposedly lauded for their engineering and architecture skills would design something as clunky as those robot hands in Remake. There's just no way.


	4. Rita and Director Tuesti

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Enjoy your meeting.” Heidegger added as he turned on his heels like a solider in the military and walked away laughing._
> 
> _Rita automatically extended an arm, stopping Reeve from stepping forward after him._
> 
> _“It’s not worth it, sir,” she said._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should probably add slow burn to the tags and up the chapter count since this is ending up as a longer story than I had initially thought. T_T

Rita Spencer went to bed at midnight and woke up at 4:30. Her flat in Sector Seven had no windows and was on the twenty-sixth floor, but just outside of the Junon Drive MMTS stop and one transfer to the Black Line away from the Shinra Shuttle Service. 

The day Rita found out she had been hired, she had gone shopping for suits that she surely needed and definitely did not own in the Sector Eight downtown area along the shuttle line, marvelling at how close it was to her flat. She had studied her reflection in a shop mirror, thinking of how nice it would be to walk through downtown before work, skipping the inner shuttle loop altogether. 

Due to certain particulars of the job — being at the office before the sun rose over the topside plate — she had not skipped the shuttle once. 

Rita yawned, draining her cup of coffee before the train shuddered to a stop at Gau Rise for the shuttle transfer. She, and one of her favourite dress shirts, had learned the hard way that coffee must be finished prior to Gau Rise on her fifth day. It was a particularly sudden stop and one that she had been meaning to talk to Reeve about when they were not inundated with other projects. 

The Urban Development and Planning Division seemed to be perpetually drowning in unfinished tasks while the Weapons Division and Public Safety soaked up most of the taxpayer money. 

It made Rita angrier than Reeve who, from her vantage point, operated at a baseline level of frustration with his meagre budget that had to have been built up over many years of disappointments. 

Grabbing the leather handhold tightly with her right hand, Rita juggled the empty paper cup with her left. The plastic lid nearly popped off as the train ground to a halt at Gau Rise. She had already released the handhold and taken two long strides to the doorway. Her third step had Rita out of the opening automatic doors and she tossed her empty cup in a bin on her fourth. Five, six, seven, eight, nine and she flipped her badge over on the tenth, tapping her employee ID card against the Shinra shuttle doors. 

It was a practiced routine and one that she found herself enjoying. Even if she couldn’t take a more leisurely stroll through downtown at sunrise, she loved taking the train. 

Determined and eager to prove herself as Director Tuesti’s best personal assistant — better yet, one that could stick around for a longer duration than the myriad others who had come before her — Rita arrived at his office no later than 6:00. 

This didn’t necessarily guarantee that she was there before Reeve, but over the past fortnight he had only beat her to the office once, and another time they had arrived at the same time, sharing a look and then a laugh as she had stepped onto the same train car in the inner loop. She knew that he lived in downtown Sector Five somewhere and that his mother lived further in the same sector towards the outer loop and Little Wutai. 

Although she doubted that his own flat was at all lived in, since he spent the vast majority of his time holed up in his office or overseeing projects in the city itself.

“I thought you had a company car?” Rita had asked once the shuttle began to move. Her eyes had narrowed in confusion. “In fact I know you do, we took it to Sector One for the park approval.” 

She had then been treated to Director Reeve Tuesti blushing profusely and ducking his head. He tugged at the cuffs of his immaculate pinstripe suit which, even in a car full of Shinra employees, made him stand out due to its quality and fit. 

“I don’t like to use it unless absolutely necessary,” he had finally said, eyes suddenly fascinated with his black loafers. “And I like trains. I helped design some of them, so why not make good use of them in my every day life?”

Rita had found herself utterly charmed, shaking her head to clear it for a moment. Her job was to learn and study under this man, not be impressed by him. 

Yet, it was difficult not to be impressed by Reeve’s work ethic and the amount of genuine care he had towards the city of Midgar. If she hadn’t seen Reeve physically bleed — several paper-cuts and one time he’d tripped into a pile of metal debris while inspecting a potential site for said park in Sector One — and fall asleep in his office once, Rita might have doubted that he was human. 

Although this too was an exaggeration because Director Reeve Tuesti was painfully human. He carried his emotions outwardly — more than any executive should. The dark circles and bags under his eyes seemed to disappear when he spoke of certain city projects with a smile that transformed his face, making his hawkish nose appear less severe and his eyes crinkle at the corners with joy. 

At other times — most of the time — he wore a pained expression, as if he was waiting for something terrible to happen. 

The executive elevator was empty at this time of day, save a few café employees headed to the upper levels before the rest of Shinra arrived. They leaned sleepily against the glass, smiling at Rita, who they now knew as Director Tuesti’s latest in a line of long-suffering assistants. 

She had only had to mention that she was the director’s assistant on her fourth day and the staff already had fresh coffee and ice-cold bottles of green tea waiting for her well before the café opened at 7:00. 

“We know the director,” the manager on duty had said. Her eyes were half-lidded with sleep but friendly and her nametag read “Cris!” with an exclamation point. “He’s insane, but very kind to us.”

Rita still felt badly about bothering her so early. She always left a massive tip and Cris responded with a broad smile.

Somewhere in her head, Rita could hear the voice of her mother saying that money didn’t make up for the extra work she was making them do, but she couldn’t think of any other way to show her appreciation. 

On this particular morning, Rita had just finished pulling up the last of the files she needed for the Rasberry case when Reeve burst into the office. 

“Remind me never to anger the Turks. It’s something I already know, but sometimes I need reminding,” he said without prompting. 

He must have run into at least one of them on the way here. Based on his annoyance, it hadn’t been Rude (who didn’t talk) or Elena (who had seemed friendly the one time Rita had met her in passing) which left Tseng or Reno. 

Reno was merely obnoxious. Tseng was dangerous. 

He looked up at her with a sheepish grin as he sat down and she found herself smiling back as she handed him his coffee. The green tea bottles had already been tucked away in his mini-fridge for later that afternoon. 

“Consider yourself reminded sir,” she said. “Did something happen?”

He shook his head and she frowned, but if he didn’t want to talk about it there wasn’t really much she could do. She waited for him to respond, but instead he stared oddly past her, drinking his coffee as a range of emotions crossed his face. 

“Director Tuesti?” Rita asked tentatively. 

He didn’t respond. She tried his name a few more times before stepping closer to his desk, nearly yelling it in his face. 

“Y-yes?” He jumped and drank the rest of his coffee in one swig. 

“Forgive me if I’m overstepping but are you okay…sir?” she asked. “I’ve been calling your name for a while now.”

He tilted his head back, draining the dregs from his coffee cup. “I’m completely fine, Rita. You’re not overstepping. Thank you. And you don’t have to call me that. I already told you to call me Reeve.”

_Technically I do, but you’ll never hear me say it to your face._

“Habit,” she said, dropping the Rasberry case files on his desk. “And here are the schematics for Rowan Rasberry’s bed.”

She bit back a slight boast that she had drawn them up herself from scratch. 

“Have you been here long enough to have habits?”

Rita would have been slightly offended if he hadn’t immediately winced and flushed as the words left his mouth. It had only been a few weeks, but she had noticed that Reeve tended to speak sometimes before his brain caught up with what he was actually saying. 

“I’m so sorry. I’m still not awake,” he said waving the drawing in the air. “This is very good. Your drawings are so precise they make me envious. Honestly it seems like you’ve been here longer.” He winced again. “In a good way, of course.”

She couldn’t help but laugh at his discomfort, taking the bed schematic from his outstretched hand. 

“I’ll see about getting this to the techs,” Rita said. “So they can deliver it to the Rasberry home as soon as possible.” She was rather proud of her overall design, and it should keep Rowan Rasberry as comfortable as possible while hopefully lessening the burden of care on his wife.

“How…are they?” Reeve asked.

“They’re upset. Amelia Rasberry seems to be dealing with the situation the best, but Jessie is angry. Not only did she lose her father, but she lost her job and probably her career.”

Reeve sighed. He pressed his fingers on each side of his head, massaging his temples gently. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you are.” And she did know, more than anyone else. She would be surprised if Reeve didn’t have nightmares about it since he had seemed to carry the weight of the accident since their initial meeting in the hospital. “But sometimes, that doesn’t help.”

“I know,” he said, nodding. 

Rita stood in silence for a moment while Reeve looked down at another stack of files — the rebuilding of the Sector Six plate and expressway — she had piled in front of his centre computer monitor. 

“How about I go get us some more coffee?” she asked. “I’ll work on the Rasberry case while you take another look at Sector Six.”

“I’ll get it,” Reeve said, standing up. “Take another look at that drawing. You may have to move the hydraulics forward so it can fit into their house. Have you measured the door?”

“No,” she said, smiling brightly. This was what she was here for; to learn from the best. “I haven’t. But I will.”

He nodded, ducking his head as he walked out of the office.

***

They ran into Heidegger on the way to a planning meeting for the Sector One park.

“Director Tuesti,” Heidegger said, dragging out all six syllables in a mocking tone before sneering down at Rita. “And who is this young thing?”

Both Rita and Reeve visibly bristled.

“Rita Spencer, sir.” She hoped he couldn’t hear her teeth grinding, but they sounded so loud inside her head along with a ringing in her ears and white-hot anger.

“Well Miss Spencer, if you ever want to come to a division that actually has money and gets things done, you’re always welcome in Public Safety,” Heidegger said. “In fact, word is that we’re about to have another tremendous windfall.”

Rita watched as Reeve’s back went ramrod straight as he drew himself up to his full height, looking up into Heidegger’s eyes instead of at his shoes. 

“What are you talking about, Heidegger?”

“Oh, you haven’t heard? Another tax increase is on the way. You should be happy, Director, I hear you’re getting a whole two percent of the cut this time.”

“The people of Midgar—“

“The people of Midgar have to do what they’re told, don’t they?” The Director of Public Safety sneered again. He puffed out his chest when he noticed the gathering crowd of engineers and staff behind Reeve in their conference room. 

“Enjoy your meeting.” Heidegger added as he turned on his heels like a solider in the military and walked away laughing. 

Rita automatically extended an arm, stopping Reeve from stepping forward after him. 

“It’s not worth it, sir,” she said. 

He looked down at her with a pained expression. Rita’s heart sank as she watched him crumple. He looked down at his loafers, scuffing one foot against the marble floor while shaking his head. 

When he lifted it, the dark circles and frown lines were more prominent than ever, but he had a steely glint in his eyes. 

“You’re right,” Reeve said. “I’m sorry. Let’s start the meeting.”

***

“Is something wrong, sir?”

It had been a long day and Reeve was once again staring at nothing, eyes glazed over with concern. 

“Office politics are not my forté,” he finally said. 

Rita tilted her head to the side in confusion. Something had happened that morning and he still wasn’t telling her about it. Despite the fact that he didn’t seem like the type of person who would talk before he was ready, she opened her mouth to push him on it as the 18:00 reactor venting began. 

Transfixed, she watched the green mako vapour rise in bright columns above the city. All reactors were in unison and the particles dissipated into the setting sun as the streetlights came on across the plate. 

“Mine too,” Reeve said. He wasn’t looking at her but out at the city with a soft smile. It reminded her of the way her grandfather looked at her mom — like a doting parent. 

“I used to love riding this elevator as a child,” she said. “The city is so beautiful like this.”

All this time she had been waiting for someone else to look across the city with enthusiasm or pride. Or love. 

_He really loves this city._

“You really love this city, don’t you Director?” 

Reeve jerked away from the glass, where his fingertips had been hovering millimetres from touching it. For a moment she imagined him as a child, pressed against the elevator as if that would make him physically closer to the city. 

“Yes,” he said hoarsely. He shook his head. “This city is my job.”

_But it’s more than that, isn’t it Reeve?_

Rita didn’t say this aloud. Instead she nodded at him before looking back out across the plate.


	5. The Thursday Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Contrary to popular belief within the Shinra Electric Power Company, Director Reeve Tuesti was not a bad liar. He had learned to be exceptional at it. So exceptional, in fact, that people assumed that he was horrific at lying — the sheepish downward glance, playing up a natural habit of pulling at his shirtsleeves, it was too easy at this point. He simply exaggerated his own instinctive mannerisms._
> 
> _It was as easy as learning how to carry himself as an executive as opposed to an engineer, or undoing a thick grasslands accent. As he had made his way up the Shinra corporate ladder, it had come easier and easier to him._
> 
> _The problem was how much he loathed himself afterwards._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I upped the chapter amount. ^ ^;
> 
> Also this chapter has one major spoiler from FF7 Remake regarding Chadley and who he really is. If you haven't finished the game, this is your spoiler warning. 
> 
> A few of the minute details of Reeve's backstory and his childhood at the Shinra Academy come from [Tinker Planner Soldier Spy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23610745/chapters/56660224) which is my attempt at writing out Reeve's life from his childhood to working for Shinra. This isn't an extension of it, per se, but there are a few details that I pulled from it.

Every Wednesday night for the past few months, Reeve had slept in his office. 

In a locked drawer where he kept a variety of meaningful odds and ends — the throttle handle of a snowmobile, a chessboard, his Academy clip-on tie among other objects — Reeve also kept a key to a safe hidden inside his desk that included a bedroll and a spare suit. This was in addition to the several spares that Rita had organized in his office coat closet. 

It wasn’t until he attended the Shinra Academy that he had slept in a bed at all. Sleeping on the floor of his office certainly wasn’t going to hurt him all that much. 

Reeve rose from the floor and rolled his neck over his left shoulder, massaging out a stiff muscle with his fingers. 

Carefully folding his sleeping pallet into as small of a size as possible, he tucked it back into his storage space, sealing the wooden panel underneath his desk that kept it hidden. Reeve brushed his fingers over the smooth handle of the throttle in his desk drawer before placing the key next to his Academy tie and shutting it. 

The clocks on his computer monitors all read 3:58. 

He used his two minutes to brush the dust off of his dress shirt, unbuttoning the cuffs and rolling them up carefully. Traces from this particular job could never end up on his office attire. 

Reeve had promised him that these meetings would be private and the boy had little privacy or agency in his life. 

Reeve could give him this one, small thing. 

The clocks read 3:59 in the bottom right corner of his monitors. Reeve sat up in his chair and looked at his office door. 

_Three . . . two . . . one . . ._

“Director Tuesti. Good morning, sir.”

The door opened precisely at 4:00, revealing Chadley in his standard-issue lab coat.

“You’re hurt,” Reeve said, tilting his head slightly as he watched Chadley gingerly press the door behind him, closing it without making a sound. 

“You always know, sir.”

Reeve sighed, rubbing his index fingers against his temples. “Let’s do a diagnostics test then.” 

Chadley nodded and walked forward with a blank expression. There was no limp or difference in his walk that Reeve could see, he just somehow knew that Chadley wasn’t operating at full capacity. 

Once Reeve had tried to explain to Chadley about what it meant to be an Inspire. Knowing so little about it himself other than the fact that machines just seemed to talk to him in ways that he couldn’t understand, it had only lead to confusion and a constant line of questioning from the cyborg. Finally he had given up and directed Chadley’s persistence back to the boy’s materia research. 

Reeve was terrible at using materia, but enjoyed listening to Chadley talk about it. He reminded him of an old Academy friend sometimes. Materia usage and growth was the one topic of conversation where the boy seemed human rather than the latest research AI Hojo could get his hands on before he inevitably grew bored and discarded it. Or left it to rust completely. 

He still regretted finding one of Hojo’s forgotten projects accidentally. It had been too late. Reeve still had nightmares about them. He wanted to make sure that whatever Hojo had done to that cyborg never happened to Chadley. 

“What tasks have you been running for Hojo lately?” he asked softly as he parted Chadley’s hair while simultaneously pressing a small button under the boy’s monacle. A bright laser touchscreen beamed down from Chadley’s left eye onto Reeve’s desk.

“Nothing I don’t already know. If I was human I would certainly be bored. I’ve been spending time in the Midgar undercity, looking for research subjects as he directed; however, I have not come across anyone suitable for my research.”

Chadley paused, tilting his head to the side mimicking Reeve’s slouch. 

“Director, is there a reason why you’re sitting like this?”

Reeve hummed as he tapped absentmindedly on his desk. He didn’t like laser or holographic keyboards. The lack of response from keypresses felt under his fingers felt oddly unstable. 

“My neck is a bit stiff from sleeping incorrectly,” Reeve said just as Chadley spoke again, presuming that Reeve’s pause meant that he didn’t want to talk about it.

“Director, please forgive my forwardness. Unfortunately you are the only one with whom I can converse on these subjects.”

Reeve frowned, pulling out a small screwdriver to tighten a screw in Chadley’s monocle. “Hojo doesn’t talk to you at all?”

“The Professor doesn’t find it necessary for my research. He aims to eliminate anything that would waste the precious time I have.”

“That sounds like him.” Reeve undid the colourful designer scarf that Chadley wore when he roamed outside of the labs. It hid another diagnostics panel which he tapped lightly with the screwdriver until he found a loose plate seam.

“Still, he should be aware of how important social interaction is for you,” Reeve said. “Have you tried walking around the Skyview Hall and talking to people?”

Chadley’s expression remained vacant but his shoulders rolled ever-so-slightly back. Reeve wasn’t sure if Chadley even knew that this was the reaction of a dejected person, or if he had picked it up naturally from his adventures in the undercity. 

“I may have a solution for you. How would you feel about meeting one of my friends?”

He had planned on reactivating Cait Sith that weekend anyway for whatever Tseng was up to. 

“A friend, sir?”

Reeve nodded. “Someone very much like you but who is…” he trailed off trying to think of how to describe Cait Sith’s personality. “A bit more vivacious.” 

“Vivacious… like Director Scarlet?”

Reeve snorted and then began coughing loudly to cover up his reaction. “Sorry, I’ve been a bit sick lately.”

“I hope you feel better, sir.”

Waving his free hand in the air while tightening another screw in Chadley’s shoulder, Reeve shook his head. “I’ll be fine. They’re even more vivacious than Scarlet.”

Chadley’s expression remained the same, but he allowed a small amount of incredulousness to seep into his voice. 

“I cannot imagine that, Director.”

Tightening the screw one final turn, Reeve felt his nerves settle. They always did once he fixed something or someone, in the case of Chadley. There was a sense of correctness, of rightness, that filled him whenever he found an answer to any robotic problem. 

“Sir, if you’ll again forgive my forwardness, but if you’re going to supply me with a conversation partner, you could try seeking out a similar acquaintance. I rarely see you talk to anyone, although I suppose you at least have your assistant, Miss Spencer.”

“Don’t I know it,” Reeve said, patting Chadley on the shoulder as he retied the boy’s scarf. 

“Now get out of here before Hojo realizes you’re gone or Miss Spencer comes in extraordinarily early.”

Chadley nodded seriously. “As she is wont to do. Thank you very much, Director.”

Reeve smiled warmly. “Keep yourself out of trouble, Chadley.”

***

Contrary to popular belief within the Shinra Electric Power Company, Director Reeve Tuesti was not a bad liar. He had learned to be exceptional at it. So exceptional, in fact, that people assumed that he was horrific at lying — the sheepish downward glance, playing up a natural habit of pulling at his shirtsleeves, it was too simple at this point. He simply exaggerated his own instinctive mannerisms.

It was as easy as learning how to carry himself as an executive as opposed to an engineer, or undoing a thick grasslands accent. As he had made his way up the Shinra corporate ladder, it had come easier and easier to him.

The problem was how much he loathed himself afterwards.

Once, back when he was still at the Academy and had truly believed in the President’s plan for him, before Shinra had taken away several of his childhood friends through death or simply sowing dissent, he had been truly terrible at lying.

Most people, including Rita, thought he was an awful liar. So when he pulled off a lie seamlessly, like the one he’d come up with to explain his early arrival to the office that morning, she only smiled at him, sympathetic. 

“You would think that they would have informed you sooner than twelve hours before a deadline,” she said, grumbling as she placed a steaming cup of coffee onto his desk next to the pile of files he had moved in front of his monitors. 

“I’ll ask Cris for a refill before we leave for Sector One in an hour, Director.”

Reeve felt awful.

***

Sector One had been the most unlikely to have a suitable lot for a park due to the Shinra airfield and two large parks that were already staples of the sector in Ruby Park and Firion City Park. Lot 01PL-085155 had initially been zoned for commercial use, and would have likely been turned into a small restaurant district — something upscale to cater to visiting executives travelling into Midgar from the airport.

Yet Rita had been insistent and had taken almost the entirety of the project under her wing. Reeve had barely touched it outside of showing up to the correct meetings and watching his engineers scramble to keep up with her enthusiasm. 

Following the ribbon-cutting ceremony, where he had been adamant that Rita take the comically-large pair of scissors to officially open the new Western Heights Park, and a public picnic for the Sector One denizens, Reeve was exhausted. 

“You’re tired, sir.” There was an uptick in Rita’s tone as she wearily regarded him from her seat on the opposite side of his Shinra company car. She phrased it like a question, despite already knowing the answer.

The car was ridiculously large, and although he enjoyed the upbeat attitude of his assigned driver, Felix, Reeve had still wanted to come by train. 

Both the President and Rita had told him that this was unacceptable. 

“I had a late night,” he said.

_And an early morning._

“And then the President asked for that Sector Six budget revision.” Reeve massaged his temples with his index fingers in a half-hearted attempt to stave off an oncoming headache. 

Rita leaned forward. She was still a metre away from Reeve but suddenly the too-large backseat seemed significantly smaller. The look in her eyes matched the intensity he had seen from her in boardroom meetings, galvanizing his younger engineers. 

“You don’t have to tell me what you’re doing, sir,” she said carefully, enunciating every word. “But in order for me to trust you, you shouldn’t lie to me.”

Reeve swallowed so hard that he wondered if Rita could hear it. A small part of him recognized that, even if she was guessing at the lie, she had been calculating enough with her timing to wait until she was in a position of relative power — following the successful opening of a park that she had helped design and create — to take a risk that in any other department could have cost Rita her job.

Another part of him, a surprisingly large part, was overjoyed. As a wave of relief washed over Reeve, he realized that he must have been subconsciously reaching out for someone to meet him, or match him, since he had immediately been brought into Shinra after graduation. 

No one had until today. Her risk deserved an equal response. 

“I cannot tell you why,” he said slowly, tugging at his shirtsleeve. Reeve nearly laughed aloud at this automatic physical response. “But I spend the night in my office on Wednesdays.”

Rita continued to look at him, obvious curiosity in her eyes, but true to her word, she didn’t press any further. 

“I’ll bring extra coffee on Thursdays,” she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Chadley ngl.


	6. Preparations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It would be so easy to simply ask her grandfather what Reeve did or who he met with on Thursday mornings. Even if he didn’t know himself, he would surely have footage from Reeve’s office that could answer some of her questions._
> 
> _She didn’t ask._

“You’re tired, sir,” she said once they were both packed away in the company car. 

Rita had shrugged off Felix’s praises with a tired but happy smile before turning her attention and concern to Reeve.

“I had a late night,” Reeve said, rubbing his temples roughly. “And then the President asked for that Sector Six budget revision.”

Rita wondered if any of his previous administrative assistants had noticed the cracks in his façade. Perhaps he was too worn out to care about the various small slip-ups that day. Perhaps the director was becoming worse at lying. 

Perhaps she was the only assistant who had stuck around long enough to even notice these minute changes in his demeanour.

_Has no one ever noticed this about you, Reeve?_

_Aren’t you lonely?_

Rita clenched her fists at her sides, hoping he didn’t pick up on the tension. 

From his worried expression, Reeve seemed wholly preoccupied — brow furrowed as a few locks of his hair had escaped whatever gel he had put in it that morning, brushing against his raised eyebrows. The downward tilt of his face made his hawkish nose look sharper, almost menacing, especially when he closed his eyes and continued to rub his temples. 

She resisted the urge to grab medication from her purse. There would be time for that later. 

Her fingers itched to reach across the leather seat covers and cover Reeve’s own. She wondered how his hands would feel. Although he self-deprecatingly called himself a pencil-pusher, Rita knew that he worked on a lot of side projects with his hands. 

At least one of them was the reason that he had been in the office so early that morning. 

Maybe his hands were calloused from drafting and his various robotics projects. 

Rita rubbed her fingers against the leather. They skimmed over the cool surface. It didn’t feel anything like a human hand and while she knew how inappropriate it would be to reach across, she wanted to let Reeve know that he wasn’t alone. 

The backseat of the company car was already massive, but now it felt like a yawning chasm had opened up between them. Frustrated, she bit down on her lower lip. 

“You don’t have to tell me what you’re doing, sir,” she said slowly. “But in order for me to trust you, you shouldn’t lie to me.”

Rita could only hope that he could hear, with clarity, what she was trying to say. Felix was intuitive, but even he wouldn’t recognize the gravity of her words. Only Reeve could, and only if he was open to what she was actually saying. 

_You’re not alone, Reeve._

“I cannot tell you why, but I spend the night in my office on Wednesdays.” 

His voice was quiet and he plucked nervously at his shirtsleeves, refusing to fully meet her eyes. It was a habit of his when he was uncomfortable. 

Rita didn’t know whether he did it on purpose as part of his sheepish put-upon corporate mask, or if it was truly a childish affectation he had never been able to throw away. She supposed that it was likely a combination of both, given how much he did it, seemingly without noticing. 

Despite her assurance to the contrary, Rita had desperately wanted to know exactly what he was doing. She wanted to know everything behind the impossibly early hours — she now knew that he was sleeping in his office and nearly shook her head, exasperated — and cryptic messages from Tseng. 

Still, Reeve’s response was more than she had expected. It made her proud, like she had passed a test that no other assistant had ever been able to pass.

 _”Doesn’t mean to work his staff into the ground but they all love him so they do it anyway.”_

Her grandfather had been right again. 

What he hadn’t fully realized — truthfully, she hadn’t fully realized it herself until this moment — was the lengths Rita would be willing to go through to be an exception above this already high bar. 

She would have to meet Reeve where he was and then they would push beyond that point together. 

“I’ll bring extra coffee on Thursdays,” she said, like it was another simple task added to an increasingly long list of agenda items. 

And in a way, it was.

***

“I’ll do it,” she said without context, closing the book she had been reading with a loud snap.

Her grandfather winced at the sound. 

“That’s probably a first edition,” he said. 

“I know,” Rita said. “It’s always been a favourite of mine.”

At the same time one of the shelving robots chimed in with, “Mako. Explosive.”

Rita stared at her grandfather as she carefully slid the book back onto its shelf, watching his expression change as he realized what she had said earlier. His wide smile made him look almost menacing. 

“You’ve thought about this for a while, haven’t you?” she asked.

He nodded in response, limping towards the hallway to his office. The bookshelf had already been moved. Hart bowed stoically at them both as they walked inside. 

“Unlike the rest of the executive board, Tuesti has a heart,” her grandfather said, sighing with relief as he sat down behind his desk. 

“He went against the company internally to help out the former director of the Turks, Veld. I thought that I would be able to recruit him then, but he turned me down. He joined the company fresh out of the Academy, right after he gave that reactor presentation you’re so enamoured with.”

Rita rolled her eyes and looked up at the wall of monitors in the mayor’s office. 

It would be so easy to simply ask her grandfather what Reeve did or who he met with on Thursday mornings. Even if he didn’t know himself, he would surely have footage from Reeve’s office that could answer some of her questions. 

She didn’t ask. 

“What made you change your mind, Rita?” He questioned her softly, still giving her an out if she didn’t want to go through with it.

His consideration made her smile. 

As Mayor Domino he was either seen as a glorified figurehead, feeding off of taxpayer money or a nuisance at best to whatever Shinra was planning for the city. And while she knew that her grandfather tried his best despite both of these assumptions, it still made her happy when he was so transparent about how much he cared. 

“Director Tuesti is killing himself rather quickly,” she said. “Not only with overwork for the company but all of these… unspoken side projects. He’s miserable and his actions are almost completely ineffective going through the proper channels. I think he’s stuck around in his position for as long as he has because he felt like he could still serve the city from the inside, but the company is making it more and more difficult every day.”

Rita tried to give a rundown of Reeve’s status as clinically and distantly as possible, like an AVALANCHE operative. 

From the wry smile on her grandfather’s face, he wasn’t fooled for a second. 

“You can’t save him, Rita. He’s a middle-aged man who is going to do what he wants. I hope you know that.”

She bristled at the accusation. It hurt because it was partially true. 

Rita was introspective enough to realize that her own feelings towards Reeve were certainly inappropriate and some of her actions had crossed what was already a blurry boundary due to the sheer amount of time they spent together. 

The nature of Reeve’s perfectionism meant that any assistant who wanted to keep up with him would naturally have their personal life eroded away, only for contact and friendliness with Reeve to replace it. She knew all of this, and yet couldn’t help but care about him — certainly more than she should. 

Her grandfather sighed loudly, interrupting her thoughts. 

“The first thing to do will be to bring the director here to meet with me,” he said. 

“That’s it?” 

She had expected something more secretive and possibly nefarious. 

“What do you mean, ‘That’s it?’” His laugh was quick and sharp. “We’re not part of a silly spy novel plot.”

***

The following Thursday morning, Rita took the earliest shuttle to Shinra Headquarters. After thanking Cris repeatedly and leaving her a hefty tip that hopefully made the extra trouble worthwhile, Rita steeled herself outside of the director’s office.

When she stepped forward to rap her knuckles lightly on the door, balancing a cardboard coffee tray in the crook of her elbow, Rita was nearly knocked over by a boy exiting Reeve’s office.

“Oh, hello Ms Spencer,” the boy said. “I’m terribly sorry that I did not see you there. I hope I didn’t knock anything over.” 

He looked to be about fourteen or fifteen years-old — perhaps an intern for the Science and Research Division based on the lab coat he wore, which was slightly too large for his small frame. The boy wore a monocle, but what caught Rita’s attention was his face. It was perfectly symmetrical and smooth, bordering on the uncanny. 

Reeve suddenly appeared in the doorway, looking nervous. 

“Rita, this is Chadley,” he said. “He works for Professor Hojo. Every Thursday we meet to discuss their latest developments.”

She couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but something in Reeve’s voice told her that even this wasn’t the full story. Rita now had even more questions than answers, beginning with what made Chadley so important that he scheduled regular meetings with a department head that was not his own. 

Still, she burned with a fierce pride that Reeve had decided to let her in at all. 

He was trying to include her. 

Reeve hadn’t needed to introduce her to Chadley and could have easily made it so they never would have met, even “accidentally.” 

“It’s very nice to meet you, Chadley,” she said. 

“Pleased to officially meet your acquaintance, Ms Spencer,” Chadley said with a small bow. “I must return to my research. Thank you again, Director.”

Reeve stood awkwardly in the office entrance as Chadley turned sharply on his heels and walked down the hallway.

“He’s…” she trailed off, watching Reeve visibly brace himself.

“Is he always that formal?” she finally asked, looking up at him with a smile. “Also I brought your coffee as promised, sir.”

The tension in Reeve’s shoulders eased.

“Yes, he is,” Reeve said with a grin. As he ushered her inside, he hand briefly brushed against her back. She could somehow feel the warmth through her suit jacket. 

“Thank you, Rita.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally . . . things are moving forward. ^ ^;


	7. Reeve and the Mayor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The mayor grinned widely, his teeth sharp behind thin lips and an impeccably-groomed moustache._
> 
> _“I like you, Tuesti. So I’m going to be as direct as possible. I want you to reconsider officially joining AVALANCHE. We could use you and your robot. Rita has agreed to be the liaison between the two of us.”_
> 
> _“Has Ms Spencer been spying on me for you?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter count went up again, whoops. T_T

If anyone at the Shinra Electric Power Company had asked Director Reeve Tuesti what he thought about the mayor, he would have said something fairly affable and complimentary. 

The mayor truly cared about the citizens of Midgar. 

The mayor had overseen Midgar from the installation of the mako reactor prototypes to the bustling city that it was today. 

The mayor was easy to work with. 

All of these statements were factually true. 

Reeve believed all of them, particularly the fact that Mayor Domino cared about the well being of his constituents. 

The mayor had always been easy for Reeve to work with, even when other Shinra executives had attempted to pit the two against each other, forcing them to fight over scraps in the Midgar budget that weren’t siphoned off to Heidegger or Scarlet’s divisions. Hojo’s seemed to generate its own money and interest, which was another issue in and of itself that Reeve had been looking into as one of his side projects. 

He assumed the mayor had also looked into Hojo for myriad reasons that had everything to do with Reeve’s other chance run-ins with the mayor and nothing to do with concrete proof. 

None of the pre-packaged statements that Reeve would have said about Mayor Domino hinted at Reeve’s personal assessment of the man as a coworker or individual. That description and particular truth was far more complex. 

When Rita had told him that her grandfather wanted to meet with him, Reeve quickly grew nervous for a variety of reasons. The largest one was an odd surveillance dance that the two had been playing with each other for years — Reeve and Cait Sith looking across the figurative room and sizing up the mayor and his massive network of cameras that covered the entire Shinra building. 

By Reeve’s estimation, the mayor had no fewer than twelve separate camera setups hidden in the Urban Development and Planning executive offices. It had been ten before Rita had come to work for him. Reeve assumed the added two — at least two — cameras were for her protection and safety. 

Mayor Domino had his cameras and Reeve had Cait Sith. 

Cait Sith was how he knew about nearly everything that was going on at Shinra. The robot cat was as trustworthy of a companion as Reeve could possibly have — a part of his own being and someone who had been there for him since the Junon Academy. Cait Sith reported all of the mayor’s activities to Reeve directly. A short time after his first foray into active company defiance with Veld, Tseng, and the Turks, Reeve had learned that the mayor was AVALANCHE’s man on the inside of Shinra. 

Now that President Shinra had ensured his son’s extended overseas assignment after the Turks’ incident, Mayor Domino was likely Shinra’s highest-ranking employee that was actively reporting to AVALANCHE. Reeve still suspected that Rufus was funding the eco-terrorist group even in his exile but hadn’t gathered enough information to prove it. 

Reeve sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, loosening a few bangs that fell casually across his forehead. He really needed to fix Cait Sith as soon as possible. The Rowan Rasberry accident and building Western Heights park with Rita had taken up the majority of his spare time on top of his regular workload. 

Despite all of his reservations, Reeve had found himself nodding in response to her question immediately, instructing her to set the meeting up at the mayor’s leisure and to let him know when to show up at the library. 

Much later that night he had leaned back in his office chair with a glass of whiskey and realized that he acquiesced without a second thought because of Rita herself. Even later that morning he had downed another glass of whiskey in his flat and attempted not to think about why that was. 

Rita Spencer was the best assistant he had ever had during his time with Shinra. He couldn’t afford to lose her over something silly like a passing attraction. 

Now he found himself faced with Rita’s grandfather who he had a sneaking suspicion was part adversary, part ally. This meeting could be anything from another AVALANCHE recruitment attempt to a thoroughly unnecessary shovel talk regarding said granddaughter. 

Sighing again, Reeve fiddled with his shirtsleeves and nodded at Hart, who opened the hidden door to the mayor’s office behind a wayward library bookshelf. Reeve had memorized which book to pull, but didn’t feel comfortable intruding on the mayor’s privacy so boldly — Cait Sith’s activities notwithstanding. 

“Have a seat, Director Tuesti,” Mayor Domino called to him from behind his desk. He was silhouetted by the glaring cool light of his surveillance monitors that covered the entire back wall of his office. He gestured towards two chairs that had been placed side-by-side in front of the desk.

The entire setup unfortunately reminded Reeve of regular meetings he used to have with President Shinra at the Academy when he was a student. 

“My granddaughter is quite concerned with your health, Director,” the mayor said as Reeve sat down in a plush chair and faced him.

Whatever Reeve had expected, it hadn’t been an inquiry about his well-being. He stared up at Mayor Domino with a look that he hoped was more composed curiosity than confusion. 

The mayor grinned widely, his teeth sharp behind thin lips and an impeccably-groomed moustache. 

“I like you, Tuesti. So I’m going to be as direct as possible. I want you to reconsider officially joining AVALANCHE. We could use you and your robot. Rita has agreed to be the liaison between the two of us.”

“Has Ms Spencer been spying on me for you?”

Mayor Domino laughed, high-pitched and oddly fierce. 

“I asked her to and she turned me down. She mentioned something about wanting to be the best in her position and avoid any accusations or unwanted complications. Her position in AVALANCHE depends on your answer. Currently, she’s not a part of our organization.”

Reeve let out an audible breath that he hadn’t realized he was holding until that moment. A quick quirk of an eyebrow let Reeve know that his relief hadn’t gone unnoticed by the mayor. 

“Should I be concerned at your attention, Director?”

Shaking his head, Reeve absentmindedly played with the cuffs of his suit jacket, rolling the button between his thumb and forefinger. 

“I would never try anything untoward. Ms Spencer is my best employee.”

Reeve didn’t want to hint so closely to the truth of his feelings, but also felt that lying completely would be inappropriate and had the potential to make its way back to Rita in the worst way. Another eyebrow quirk hinted that Reeve’s omission had also not gone unnoticed by Mayor Domino. 

After a moment, the mayor simply nodded and turned towards the wall of monitors. 

“AVALANCHE is nowhere near what it was when you were last involved,” Mayor Domino said. 

“Currently we are continuing to undermine efforts from within the company. There’s a rogue cell that we’re also keeping our eye on who want to opt for a more radical and violent approach.”

The underlying glee in the mayor’s voice made it abundantly clear that he would fully support this idea if it wasn’t presumably against the rest of AVALANCHE’s wishes. 

“Rita brought to my attention that you are frustrated with your current situation in the company. Rather than working yourself to death trying to fix it yourself, why not have allies that understand your position and perspective?”

This entire conversation was a figurative minefield, but one that Reeve was more than comfortable, and somewhat thrilled, to navigate. 

“Did you tell her about my meetings with Chadley?” The mayor’s directness had forced Reeve’s hand in his own responses. 

Mayor Domino raised his hands in front of him in a surrender gesture, wincing in pain as he leaned a bit too hard on his bad leg. 

“She asked me nothing. I told her nothing,” the mayor said with the same cagey grin. “But if you’re asking whether I knew of your meetings with Chadley before she did, the answer is yes.”

“Chadley would be a good addition to your cause,” Reeve said. “He’s not being socialised properly by Hojo and has been wandering around the Midgar undercity somewhat aimlessly looking for conversation. I believe he frequents The Leaf House, an establishment with which AVALANCHE is well-acquainted, to talk to the children and teachers there.”

The mayor hadn’t expected this answer and was visibly a bit thrown off, but his grin widened after a moment, realizing the full extent of what Reeve was offering. 

“So you accept?”

Reeve nodded. “I accept.”

“That was easier than I thought it would be, Tuesti.”

“Timing is everything,” Reeve said, aiming for an airy dismissive tone.

Mayor Domino reached across his desk, offering his hand. When Reeve rose to take it, the mayor smiled at him. 

“Rita will let you know more in detail. I would get to work on fixing that cat of yours.”

Reeve suddenly was struck by a familial resemblance to Rita when she was genuinely happy about something and couldn’t help but smile back. 

“Out of curiosity,” Reeve said as he straightened the chair in front of him. “Is Rufus…?”

The mayor’s eyes narrowed. “Would this affect whether you officially join AVALANCHE or not?”

“No.” Reeve shook his head. “I was simply curious given his prior involvement. That’s all.”

“Then I would say that’s on a need-to-know basis, Director.” Mayor Domino smirked but his eyes twinkled with mirth. 

“And I don’t need to know,” Reeve said softly, smiling back. He bowed slightly at the older man as he exited the office. 

“Thank you, Mayor Domino. I look forward to working with you and Ms Spencer.”


	8. The King of Cats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The cat stretched, giving Reeve a knowing look, and then turned to Rita with a wide grin._
> 
> _“The King of Cats,” Rita said slowly taking in the entire scene._
> 
> _It was a bit ridiculous, with Reeve grinning at her maniacally and surely sleep-deprived from just inside the doorway and the cat peering up at her regally from over a chair back._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone still following this. ^ ^

On Fridays, Rita escorted Reeve to her grandfather’s office in the library and watched Reeve give her a small smile before walking through the bookcases and allowing the heavy wooden doors to close behind him. Hart stood outside, his back ramrod straight despite his age, keeping watch over the entrance. 

The shelving robots moved less stiffly than Hart. 

Her role in all of this was, if Rita was being completely honest, frustrating at best and demeaning at worst. She said as much to her grandfather one afternoon who repeated that she didn’t need to know and much of the hierarchy of AVALANCHE, even in its latest iteration, was on a need-to-know basis. He had then reminded her that her initial response in both joining AVALANCHE and convincing Reeve to do the same had been a definitive “No” and a flippant “I won’t!” when he had asked if she would ever change her mind. 

Rita knew that part of his response wasn’t logical, it was emotional and overprotective. Despite inviting her to join, her grandfather never would have been thrilled at her participation in actual missions and would have been able to get away with sidelining her regardless — she was hardly physically trained to fight.

Now that she had joined AVALANCHE of her own volition, just before she had talked to Reeve and convinced him to take the meeting, it was maddening. 

There were so many things she could be doing with her skillset, especially regarding information gathering and researching, but instead she was essentially Reeve’s cover. Rita was still a personal assistant but one without receiving the engineering and planning training that she so desperately had wanted out of this job, her time mired in busy work and escorting Reeve to the Corporate Archives. 

She wanted to give her grandfather the benefit of the doubt, but it was quickly becoming apparent that he had only wanted her to join to persuade Reeve to do the same, as if Rita had some sort of sway over Reeve that he did not. Having secured Reeve’s allegiance, her job was effectively done, outside of the most basic tasks. 

Above all else, it hurt to think that he didn’t find Rita capable enough to truly be a part of his plans. 

The doubt gnawed at her as she stared blankly up into the ceiling over her bed, waiting for the bright numbers on her alarm clock to read 04:30.

***

When Rita came to ferry Reeve to her grandfather’s office that Friday, she found him rumpled and flushed with excitement, cheeks and fingers smeared with something that looked like oil or engine grease. His hair had loosened from its usual slicked-back style and his blazer had presumably been discarded at some point in the night. She doubted that he’d slept at all.

Rita opened her mouth to ask what was going on, but he quickly ushered her in with a light touch on the small of her back, looking wildly up and down the hallway before positioning himself between her and the door as he shut it firmly. 

“Director?”

She suppressed another shudder as his fingers brushed gently against her shoulders, guiding her further into the office. Had anyone else in the company done this to her, save grandfather, she would have questioned their motivations or immediately suspected something nefarious. 

Yet this was Reeve and, while Rita logically knew that part of her lack of suspicion was due to her own personal feelings that she hoped were visibly well-hidden, the truth of being Director Reeve Tuesti’s personal assistant was that she spent nearly every waking hour either with him or attending to something he had scheduled. Reeve had followed through on his promise not to lie to her, and if she did push too hard on something he didn’t want to share, he told her. She didn’t often ask about the specificities of his meetings with her grandfather because she didn’t want to put him in the position to lie. 

Or, she didn’t want to have to put herself in a position where she would have to accept his sad smile and genuine apology that he would tell her if he was able, but it was important to keep everything separated so that she couldn’t be compromised. 

“A penny fer yer thoughts missie?” a rough, high-pitched voice asked. 

Rita looked around the room confused, but couldn’t see another person in Reeve’s office. 

“This is Cait Sith,” Reeve said. He stepped forward and gestured to a large cat curled up in one of his leather chairs in the more open part of his office. 

“Cait Sith is a fully animatronic cat I programmed back at the Shinra Academy for one of my school projects. I’ve been meaning to repair him for a while and recently had some free time to do so.”

Rita decided she would overlook the lie of recently having some free time. This was definitely part of his AVALANCHE duties, although she didn’t know how or why. 

The cat stretched, giving Reeve a knowing look, and then turned to Rita with a wide grin. 

“The King of Cats,” Rita said slowly taking in the entire scene. 

It was a bit ridiculous, with Reeve grinning at her maniacally and surely sleep-deprived from just inside the doorway and the cat peering up at her regally from over a chair back. 

“You know the story?” Reeve asked. 

Rita shrugged. “A version of it. I know it’s from the grasslands originally and my grandfather used to tell me that we should leave a saucer of milk out for the faerie cat to drink during the Harvest Festival.”

“Aye, that’s where Reeve is from as well,” Cait Sith told her. “The grasslands. Tis where I get my accent.”

She frowned and looked at Reeve. He gave her a sheepish smile and nodded his head.

“It’s true,” he said. “The story from my hometown is a bit different though. Cait Sith will steal your soul if you don’t protect a dead body from the time of death to the time of burial.”

“That’s… a bit morbid, sir.” 

_I didn’t even know where you were from, just that your mother lives in Sector Five._

_You should… I want you to tell me these things._

Rita nearly blurted her thoughts aloud before realizing that this was Reeve trying to tell her something about himself in his own awkward way. 

The cat stared sagely back at her as if he was working through his own details, a smirk on his face. 

He looked exactly like a real cat, down to the detail in his fur and the way it fell sleek and soft-looking throughout most of his body but was slightly matted near his tail, where an average cat’s cleaning routine wouldn’t be able to reach. The cat then stood up on his hind legs like a human. It completed an oddly regal look with a small crown on top of his head and what Rita had initially thought was a red scarf tied around his neck unfurled as a small cape. 

She looked back at Reeve who was watching her every move eager and visibly proud. His shirtsleeves were rolled up haphazardly, and the top of his white dress shirt was unbuttoned. He swallowed nervously and she couldn’t help but follow the movement with her eyes, from his throat down his neck and finally to a smattering of black hair that appeared at the top of his chest. 

“He’s amazing,” she said, wrenching her eyes away from him and walking around the small cat. 

“Thank ye kindly,” Cait Sith said, giving her a little bow. 

“I used him for communication at school,” Reeve said hurriedly, nearly talking over the cat. His voice was a bit higher than usual. “He could carry messages and record audio and video so we could talk to each other between dormitories.”

He looked at her with a pleading expression. 

_”They don’t give a shit what you want or think. Although Tuesti might. When he remembers you exist. Usually he’s too busy working or fixing up that robot cat for Tseng.”_

Her grandfather’s voice echoed alongside the figurative puzzle pieces sliding into place in her mind. 

“I was told that I wasn’t to be a part of this project.”

Reeve looked at her with overwhelming gratitude — presumably because she had navigated the auditory minefield of not mentioning AVALANCHE due to what were multiple bugs in his office — and then blushed, looking down at the ground. Rita saw that he had taken his shoes off and there was a small hole in the big toe of his left sock. She nearly burst out laughing. Of all the Shinra executives, only Reeve would have holes in his socks. 

“I think you should know about my hobbies,” Reeve said, stumbling a bit as he said “hobbies.” He paused and amended his statement. 

“I want you to know.”

Rita resisted the urge to wipe her eyes, feeling unshed tears at the corners of them. Instead she pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath.

“Thank you, Director.”

***

A boundary had been crossed that morning.

It felt larger than the one that had been crossed when Reeve had introduced her to Chadley. She kept looking at him only to find the director looking back at her with a mixture of confusion and awe before blushing and blustering on about some file or another. 

Cait Sith watched them both with a knowing smirk, staying surprisingly quiet throughout the early afternoon before Reeve’s scheduled AVALANCHE meeting. 

Instead of a usual small smile, Reeve waved back at her as he walked through the shelves. Cait Sith merrily tipped his crown at her from his position on Reeve’s shoulder. 

“Twas a pleasure, missie.”

Hart closed the doors behind them and took up his usual post outside the office. 

The Corporate Archives were dark that day, with more light coming from the low, yellow-tinged lamps than the open skylight. Rita reached her hand into her tote bag, fingers curling around her umbrella handle reassuringly. 

“Hart, how long have you served my grandfather?”

If Hart was at all startled or put off by the question, he didn’t express it outwardly. 

“Thirty-two years.”

It was longer than most marriages Rita knew of, including that of her own parents and her grandfather himself. 

Rita wanted to ask so many questions.

_Even though he was so unappreciative?_

_Did he ever notice your dedication?_

_How long have you waited for him?_

_Was it worth it? Were all those years worth it for you?_

Instead, she asked the one that she already knew the answer to. 

“Why have you stayed with him for so long?”

“He needed me,” Hart said immediately and without emotion. He studied her curiously, eyes staring into hers for what felt like several minutes. 

Hart’s response was stronger than the most flowery declaration of love.


	9. The Bombing of Mako Reactor One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I thought you said it wasn’t supposed to cause widespread damage to the city infrastructure!”_
> 
> _“A bomb of that size couldn’t have damaged the reactor core that badly,” Reeve muttered, more to himself than in response to Rita who was still glaring at him. “It’s simple math. That device couldn’t have caused a shockwave that large. It doesn’t make any sense.”_
> 
> _“But it did, sir. And the casualties would likely say otherwise.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No I haven't abandoned this! (I feel badly that I have to preface each chapter update with this, so thank you so much to whoever has stuck around this long.)

“Five intruders in total part of a group called AVALANCHE. They’re headed for the reactor core to blow up the generator. They are carrying a bomb and are armed and dangerous. I repeat, this is Mako Reactor One. Emergency protocol 17-074: armed terrorists have breached security. There are five intruders in total. They’re part of a gro—“ 

The call came through at 22:17.

It bypassed all five switchboards and was immediately routed to Urban Development and Planning Division Director Tuesti’s desk according to new protocol pushed through following the incident at Mako Reactor Seven with engineer and maintenance supervisor Rowan Rasberry. 

Director Tuesti’s personal assistant, Rita Spencer, first answered the call. It crackled and cut out with a loud static hiss, causing her to drop the receiver, curse loudly to herself, and rush into Director Tuesti’s office.

“What’s the total amount of people serviced by the northern reactor?” 

Rita said this with no preamble and no formality, causing the director to immediately rise from his seat. 

“Venus Gospel Oak, Firion City Park, Chocobo View, Ruby Park, Shinra Airport, Western Heights, Downtown Sector One,” Reeve rattled off. “Including the Sector One undercity, approximately 3.7 million people. I’m rounding up just in case.”

He didn’t ask her why. They had only worked together for a couple of months, but Rita wouldn’t have asked him without a reason. 

“AVALANCHE has initiated an attack on Mako Reactor One,” she said grimly. “Expect a sector-wide blackout and casualties although I don’t know the extent of those since I don’t know the scope of the bomb.”

Reeve steeled his facial expression into something that wouldn’t give much away — he was constantly being watched by Heidegger at the very least, if not numerous other Shinra company parties including his own AVALANCHE contact in the Mayor — and nodded brusquely. 

“I didn’t know,” he said, hoping that she couldn’t hear the hint of desperation in his voice. 

He suddenly needed her to understand that he hadn’t known about this particular mission — that he would never purposefully endanger one of his own reactors, innocent civilians, or whatever it was they had been working towards for the past few weeks. 

“I didn’t either,” she said icily. It was a reflection of how the Mayor had been sidelining her. Reeve knew that it was out of care for his granddaughter, but the Mayor couldn’t see how it affected her, escorting Reeve to the Mayor’s office only to be left on the other side of the heavy wood doors in the Corporate Archives. 

Reeve didn’t consider himself an expert on people, but he spent so much time with Rita that he couldn’t help but see how saddened she was by her grandfather’s actions. He had pushed past protocol a bit in showing her Cait Sith, but Reeve knew she could be trusted and, from a slightly more manipulative standpoint, needed someone on his side above all else. 

Or he just wanted to see her happy. Reeve vacillated between these two ideas frequently. It was difficult not to notice just how attractive Rita’s competence and dedication were, but cursory thoughts of how Palmer, Heidegger, and Scarlet all treated their assistants inevitably made Reeve feel dirty. 

“I would have told you,” he said, awkwardly brushing his hand against the shoulder pad of her suit jacket before he thought better of it. 

“You had a piece of lint on your shoulder,” he lied when she looked up at him. 

Unexpectedly, she smiled and reached up to squeeze his arm before turning towards one of the many monitors on the wall. 

“If you can find the direct feed into the northern reactor, I can send out an evacuation order and notify Public Safety, sir.”

Reeve nodded. His shirtsleeve was still warm from where her hand had been. He rubbed it absentmindedly. 

“The main issue is going to be the airport. It’s one of the reasons why Sector One isn’t as populated, but if the damage reaches it, flights will be affected.”

“Would they have something strong enough to breach the undercity?”

“I don’t know,” Reeve said as he began typing furiously to pull up the Reactor One live feed. He made a point to look directly at her, meeting her eyes from across the room where she was picking up the phone to call Heidegger’s office.

“I’m not aware of what AVALANCHE’s weapons capabilities are.”

This was a half-truth. 

The AVALANCHE that Rita knew was different than the AVALANCHE Reeve had known before his meetings with Mayor Domino had been financed by the President’s son and supported by a faction of the Turks. He still wasn’t certain of where Rufus Shinra fit into the current AVALANCHE hierarchy or whether the group was also a front for another assassination attempt on the President. 

Reeve had his own issues with the President stemming from his childhood Academy days. 

Yet, it was important to Reeve that Rita knew his lack of insight when it came to this particular AVALANCHE that was currently attacking their reactor. Rita had worked tirelessly on Western Heights Park, and while it was small compared to the scale of what this attack could be, Reeve didn’t want to see her first visible project as his assistant be erased by the terrorist organization they were supposedly both a part of. 

Reeve thought of her smile at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. 

The Mayor had said that everything within AVALANCHE was on a need-to-know basis. Reeve had simply made the incorrect assumption he was considered someone who needed to know. 

He wouldn’t make that mistake again. 

Reeve breathed a sigh of relief when the feed connected, the pale green colour of mako illuminating two men as they made their way through mako storage to the centre of the reactor core. The detonator carried by one of the five intruders wasn’t anything that could do widespread damage to the city, and he relayed this to Rita as she made her way back across the office with a frown. 

“Public Safety told me they have it under control, sir” she said with thinly-disguised disgust. 

“How can they have it under control when you just received the the call three minutes ago?” 

“I don’t know, sir.”

After staring at each other briefly without saying anything, Reeve knew that Rita had the same questions that he did regarding emergency protocol. 

While a terrorist attack was under Public Safety’s jurisdiction, the current protocols stated that reactor emergencies would be sent to his office without having to go through the five switchboards that had slowed down the response to Rowan Rasberry’s accident at Mako Reactor Seven. Since the call had come in as a reactor emergency, the content of the message should have been received by his own office directly, and then relayed at the first sign of a terrorist attack so that both Public Safety and Urban Development and Planning could respond in tandem.

Their office had followed the protocol, but someone in Public Safety, likely Heidegger himself, had already known of the incident. 

Suddenly the floor shook as a loud explosion was heard in the distance. Rita looked at him with distrust and anger, pointing at the monitor. The feed had cut out during the blast.

“I thought you said it wasn’t supposed to cause widespread damage to the city infrastructure!” 

“A bomb of that size couldn’t have damaged the reactor core that badly,” Reeve muttered, more to himself than in response to Rita who was still glaring at him. “It’s simple math. That device couldn’t have caused a shockwave that large. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“But it did, sir. And the casualties would likely say otherwise.”

Opening and closing a few of his desk drawers wildly, Reeve finally found the file he was looking for. Throwing on the wrinkled blazer that he had haphazardly draped across his chair back, he tucked the small white binder underneath his arm and gestured towards the door.

“Miss Spencer, would you like to accompany me to the employee lounge for some coffee?”

Her eyes narrowed and she nodded in what he hoped was understanding as much as it was agreement. “I’m right behind you, sir.”

***

Mako Reactor One was visible from the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the employee lounge. Smoke rose from the distance, and Reeve could tell by the colour of the vapour that the northernmost reactor had stopped venting. The area immediately around the reactor — by his estimation, the entirety of Firion City Park — was completely in flames, and the damage looked to be widespread, reaching all the way to the downtown area.

“This is awful,” Rita said. Her exclamation was echoed by several employees around them. 

It appeared as if the entirety of the Urban Development and Planning team had made their way to the windows to inspect the damage. Reeve fidgeted with his shirtsleeves as various sub-directors began to make their way to him, presumably for advice. 

“We’re partnering with Public Safety to assess the damage to our northernmost reactor,” Reeve said, hoping to calm his team or, at the very least, make it seem like he was in control of the response. 

“I’ll be delegating tasks later tonight as part of the response and rebuild efforts. Your team leaders will each be given a different piece of the workload. Miss Spencer will have your assignments as soon as possible.”

He interrupted his impromptu speech with an awkward bow, earning hushed, surprised murmurs from his newest employees. 

“Thank you for your time and efforts. I know this is difficult for everyone.”

A disorganized chorus of “Thank you, Director” rose from the crowd, with one young man shouting “Take care of yourself sir!” over the noise. This earned him a few laughs and a cheeky, “I’ll make sure of it!” from Rita as she steered him towards the executive elevator. 

“That was a rousing speech, sir,” she said. He could hear the humour in her voice and felt his face flushing a bit at her attention. “Are we going up?”

Reeve nodded as he quickly entered his code into the centre console in alongside the tap of his keycard. As he placed the card in his trouser pocket, he opened the binder and pulled out his PHS along with a small, black device, pressing it once.

Rita raised her eyebrows.

“We have three minutes until we reach the 70th storey where we will exit, walk to the President’s office suite, likely be rebuffed at the door, and walk back looking every bit the disheartened employees that we are,” Reeve said, failing to hide his ire. 

“That’s a communications jammer. I don’t use it frequently but I’m heavily-relying on the fact that Shinra is likely using all of their resources to respond to the terrorist attack,” he continued. 

Handing Rita the binder, he flipped to the diagram he needed her to see, tapping it once with his finger.

“This is a demolition device I’ve used in development projects. It’s almost identical to the one that the terrorists had today.”

She skimmed the page quickly before looking up at him with confusion. 

“But if this was the device they used—“

“—It couldn’t have caused the amount of damage we saw today.”

“What about materia? Or a reaction with the mako itself?”

Reeve shook his head. “Materia doesn’t work that way.”

“And neither does the mako, not if it was stored correctly,” she said. “We’ve been on a much more rigorous testing schedule. Reactor One was in perfect condition two days ago.”

“You said Public Safety was already involved, what exactly did they tell you?”

“Dispatch for Heidegger’s office said that the director himself had already been informed.”

“An explosion of that size couldn’t have happened without extra devices.”

“But why would the President want to blow up our own reactors?”

“I don’t know,” Reeve said grimly. “But I wouldn’t put it past him to do so.”

“And you didn’t know anything about an AVALANCHE operation?”

Reeve turned to her with an uncharacteristically open expression. “Rita I promise you, I knew nothing about this. I’m going to ask your grandfather about it as soon as possible. The relief and response effort comes first.”

She swallowed, nodding once as if to acknowledge the gravity of what he had just said and the use of her given name. “I’ll ask him personally as well.”

“You don’t have to do that, but it would be much appreciated.”

The elevator came to a stop with a soft chime. Reeve pocketed the jammer, checking the timer on his PHS.

“Well done,” he joked. “We had over a minute to spare.”

“I try to be as efficient as possible, sir,” she said, holding out her arm for him to take. 

He raised his eyebrows and reached out hesitantly. She rolled her eyes, grabbing his arm and locking it with hers.

"You meant everything you said in the elevator, right sir?"

"Of course!"

Reeve was a bit affronted and more than a bit confused at his own actions. He rarely opened up to other people within the company. It left him vulnerable and open to manipulation. Admittedly, he had been allowing Rita to see larger pieces of his life since he arranged for her to meet Chadley and this had led to him introducing her to Cait Sith — something she had accepted with a surprising lack of astonishment.

"Then we're a team," she said, as if it was that simple.

They walked out of the elevator side-by-side, Reeve matching his stride with hers.


End file.
